But how did he get the money ? After an Irish
fashion — by not getting it at all. Two-thirds of
the purchase money remained on mortgage, and
the balance he borrowed; or, as he puts it,
' With all I could collect of my own, and by the
'aid of my friends, I have established a root in
' the country.' That is how Burke bought
Beaconsfield, where he lived till his end came ;
whiiher he always hastened when his sensitive
mind was tortured by the thought of how badly
men governed the world ; where he entertained
all sorts and conditions of men — Quakers,
Brahmins (for whose ancient rites he provided
suitable accommodation in a greenhouse), nobles
and abbe's flying from revolutionary France,
poets, painters, and peers; no one of whom ever
long remained a stranger to his charm. Burke
flung himself into farming with all the enthu-
siasm of his nature. His letters to Arthur
Young on the subject of carrots still tremble
with emotion. You all know Burke's Thoughts
on the Prese?it Discontents. You remember — it
is hard to forget — his speech on Conciliation
with America, particularly the magnificent
passage beginning, 'Magnanimity in politics i?
'not seldom the truest wisdom, and a great



EDMUND BURKE. 161

1 empire and little minds go ill together.' You)'
have echoed back the words in which, in his''
letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol on the hateful
American War, he protests that it was not
instantly he could be brought to rejoice when
he heard of the slaughter and captivity of long
lists of those whose names had been familiar in
his ears from his infancy, and you would all join
with me in subscribing to a fund which should
have for its object the printing and hanging up
over every editor's desk in town and country a
subsequent passage from the same letter:

1 A conscientious man would be cautious how
1 he dealt in blood. He would feel some appre-

* hension at being called to a tremendous account
'for engaging in so deep a play without any
'knowledge of the game. It is no excuse for
'presumptuous ignorance that it is directed
'by insolent passion. The poorest being that
' crawls on earth, contending to save itself from
1 injustice and oppression, is an object respect-
'able in the eyes of God and man. But I
'cannot conceive any existence under heaven
'(which in the depths of its wisdom tolerates
'all sorts of things) that is more truly odious
'and disgusting than an impotent, helpless

* creature, without civil wisdom or military skill,

if



r62 EDMUND BURKE.

'' bloated with pride and arrogance, calling for
' battles which he is not to fight, and contend-
' ing for a violent dominion which he can never
'exercise. . . .

' If you and I find our talents not of the
1 great and ruling kind, our conduct at least is
'conformable to our faculties. No man's life
' pays the forfeit of our rashness. No desolate
'widow weeps tears of blood over our ignor-
' ance. Scrupulous and sober in a well-grounded
' distrust of ourselves, we would keep in the
' port of peace and security ; and perhaps in
' recommending to others something of the
' same diffidence, we should show ourselves
' more charitable to their welfare than injurious
'to their abilities. , ^x^ /

You have laughed over Burke's account of
how all Lord Talbot's schemes for the reform
of the king's household were dashed to pieces,
because the turnspit of the king's kitchen was
a Member of Parliament You have often
pondered over that miraculous passage in his
speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts, describing
the devastation of the Carnatic by Hyder AH —
a passage which Mr. John Morley says fills the
young orator with the same emotions of enthu-
siasm, emulation, and despair that (according



EDMUND BURKE. 163

to the same authority) invariably torment the
artist who first gazes on ' The Madonna ' at
Dresden, or the figures of ' Night ' and ' Dawn '
at Florence. All these things you know, else
are you mighty self-denying of your pleasures.
But it is just possible you may have forgotten
the following extract from one of Burke's farm-
ing letters to Arthur Young :

'One of the grand points in controversy (a

* controversy indeed chiefly carried on between
' practice and speculation) is that of deep plough-
ing. In your last volume you seem, on the
' whole, rather against that practice, and have

* given several reasons for your judgment which
'deserve to be very well considered. In order
' to know how we ought to plough, we ought to
'know what end it is we propose to ourselves
'in that operation. The first and instrumental

* end is to divide the soil ; the last and ultimate
' end, so far as regards the plants, is to facilitate
'the pushing of the blade upwards, and the
' shooting of the roots in all the inferior direc-
' tions. There is further proposed a more ready
' admission of external influences — the rain, the
' sun, the air, charged with all those hetero-
' geneous contents, some, possibly all, of which
1 are necessary for the nourishment of the plants.

11 — 2



i6 4 EDMUND BURKE.

' By ploughing deep you answer these ends in
'a greater mass of the soil. This would seem
'in favour of deep ploughing as nothing else
' than accomplishing, in a more perfect manner,
1 those very ends for which you are induced to
1 plough at all. But doubts here arise, only to
' be solved by experiment. First, is it quite
1 certain that it is good for the ear and grain of
' farinaceous plants that their roots should spread
'and descend into the ground to the greatest
' possible distances and depths ? Is there not
' some limit in this ? We know that in timber,
' what makes one part flourish does not equally
' conduce to the benefit of all ; and that which
' may be beneficial to the wood, does not equally
1 contribute to the quantity and goodness of the
' fruit ; and, vice versa, that what increases the
' fruit largely is often far from serviceable to
'the tree. Secondly, is that looseness to great
' depths, supposing it is useful to one of the
' species of plants, equally useful to all ? Thirdly,
1 though the external influences — the rain, the
' sun, the air — act undoubtedly a part, and a
'large part, in vegetation, does it follow that
' they are equally salutary in any quantities, at
' any depths ? Or that, though it may be useful
' to diffuse one of these agents as extensively as



EDMUND BURKE. 165

may be in the earth, that therefore it will be
' equally useful to render the earth in the same
' degree pervious to all ? It is a dangerous way
1 of reasoning in physics, as well as morals, to
1 conclude, because a given proportion of any-
1 thing is advantageous, that the double will be
' quite as good, or that it will be good at all.
'Neither in the one nor the other is it always
1 true that two and two make four.'

This is magnificent, but it is not farming,
and you will easily believe that Burke's attempts
to till the soil were more costly than productive.
Farming, if it is to pay, is a pursuit of small
economies ; and Burke was Tar too Asiatic,
tropical, and splendid to have anything to do
with small economies. His expenditure, like
his rhetoric, was in the ' grand style.' He
belongs to Charles Lamb's great race, ' the men
' who borrow.' But indeed it was not so much
that Burke borrowed as that men lent. Right-
feeling men did not wait to be asked. Dr. yi
Brocklesby, t hat good physician, whose name l x
breathes like a ben ediction through tine pa ges ?LmA
of the biographies of the best men of his time,
who soothed Dr. Johnson's last melancholy
hours, and for whose supposed heterodoxy the
dying man displayed so tender a solicitude,



1 66 EDMUND BURKE.

wrote to Burke, in the strain of a timid suitor
proposing for the hand of a proud heiress, to
know whether Burke would be so good as to
accept ;£i,ooo at once, instead of waiting for
the writer's death. Burke felt no hesitation in
obliging so old a friend. Garrick, who, though
fond of money, was as generous-hearted a fellow
as ever brought down a house, lent Burke
;£i,ooo. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who has been
reckoned stingy, by his will left Burke ^2,000,
and forgave him another ^,2,000 which he had
lent him. The Marquis of Rockingham by his
will directed all Burke's bonds held by him to
be cancelled. They amounted to ^30,000.
Burke's patrimonial estate was sold by him for
,£4,000 j and I have seen it stated that he had
received altogether from family sources as much
as^*2o,coo. And yet he was always poor, and
was glad at the last to accept pensions from
the Crown in order that he might not leave
his wife a beggar. This good lady survived her
illustrious husband twelve years, and seemed as
his widow to have had some success in paying
his bills, for at her death all remaining demands
were found to be discharged. For receiving
this pension Burke was assailed by the Duke
of Bedford, a most pleasing act of ducal fatuity,



EDMUND BURKE. 167

since it enabled the pensioner, not bankrupt of
his wit, to write a pamphlet, now of course a
cherished classic, and introduce into it a few
paragraphs about the House of Russell and the
cognate subject of grants from the Crown. But
enough of Burke's debts and difficulties, which
I only mention because all through his life they
were cast up against him. Had Burke been a
moralist of the calibre of Charles James Fox,
he might have amassed a fortune large enough
to keep up half a dozen Beaconsfields, by simply
doing what all his predecessors in the office he
held, including Fox's own father, the truly in-
famous first Lord Holland, had done — namely,
by retaining for his own use the interest on all
balances of the public money from time to time
in his hands as Paymaster of the Forces. But
Burke carried his passion for good government
into actual practice, and, cutting down the
emoluments of his office to a salary (a high
one, no doubt), effected a saving to the country
of some ^£25,000 a-year, every farthing of which
might have gone without remark into his own
pocket.

Burke had no vices, save of style and temper;
nor was any of his expenditure a profligate
squandering of money. It all went in giving



1 68 EDMUND BURKE.

employment or disseminating kindness. He
sent the painter Barry to study art in Italy.
He saved the poet Crabbe from starvation and
despair, and f hus secured to the country one
who owns the unrivalled distinction of having
been the favourite poet of the three greatest
intellectual factors of the age (scientific men
excepted) — Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and
Cardinal Newman. Yet so distorted are men's
views that the odious and anti-social excesses of
Fox at the gambling-table are visited with a
blame usually wreathed in smiles, whilst the
financial irregularities of a noble and pure-
minded man are thought fit matter for the
fiercest censure or the most lordly con-
tempt.

Next to Burke's debts, some of his com-
panions and intimates did him harm and injured
his consequence. His brother Richard, whose
brogue we are given to understand was simply
appalling, was a good-for-nothing, with a dilapi-
dated reputation. Then there was another Mr.
Burke, who was no relation, but none the less
was always about, and to whom it was not safe
to lend money. Burke's son, too, whose death
he mourned so pathetically, seems to have been
a failure, and is described by a candid friend as



EDMUND BURKE 169

a nauseating person. To have a decent follow-
ing is important in politics.

A third reason must be given : Burke's judg-
ment of men and things was often both wrong
and Violent. The story of Powell and Bern-
bridge,! wo knaves in Burke's own office, whose
cause he espoused, and whom he insisted on
reinstating in the public service after they had
been dismissed, and maintaining them there, in
spite of all protests, till the one had the grace to
cut his throat and the other was sentenced by
the Queen's Bench to a term of imprisonment
and a heavy fine, is too long to be told, though
it makes interesting reading in the twenty-second
volume of Howell's State Trials, where at the
end of the report is to be found the following
note:

1 The proceedings against Messrs. Powell and
' Bembridge occasioned much animated discus-
1 sion in the House of Commons, in which Mr.
1 Burke warmly supported the accused. The

* compassion which on these and all other occa-

* sions was manifested by Mr. Burke for the
1 sufferings of those public delinquents, the zeal
1 with which he advocated their cause, and the
1 eagerness with which he endeavoured to ex-
1 tenuate their criminality, have received severe



1 7 o EDMUND BURKE.

1 reprehension, and in particular when contrasted
' with his subsequent conduct in the prosecution
1 of Mr. Hastings.'

The real reason for Burke's belief in Bern-
bridge is, I think, to be found in the evidence
Burke gave on his behalf at the trial before Lord
Mansfield. Bembridge had rendered Burke
invaluable assistance in carrying out his reforms
at the Paymaster's Office, and Burke was con-
stitutionally unable to believe that a rogue could
be on his side ; but, indeed, Burke was too apt
to defend bad causes with a scream of passion,
and a politician who screams is never likely to
occupy a commanding place in the House of
y — >. Commons. A last reason for Burke's exclusion
F from high office is to be found in his aversion to
any measure of Parliamentary Reform. An
ardent reformer like the Duke of Richmond —
the then Duke of Richmond — who was in favour
of annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and
payment of members, was not likely to wish to
associate himself too closely with a politician
who wept with emotion at the bare thought of
depriving Old Sarum of parliamentary represen-
tation.

These reasons account for Burke's exclusion,
and jealous as we naturally and properly are of



EDMUND BURKE. 171

genius being snubbed by mediocrity, my reading
at all events does not justify me in blaming any
one but the Fates for the circumstance that
Burke was never a Secretary of State. And
after all, does it matter much what he was ?
Burke no doubt occasionally felt his exclusion a
little hard ; but he is the victor w ho remains in
possession of the field ; and Burke is now, for us
and for all coming after us, in such possession.

It now only remains for me, drawing upon my
stock of assurance, to essay the analysis of the
essential elements of Burke's mental character,
and I therefore at once proceed to say that it
was Burke's peculiarity and his glory to apply
the imagination of a poet of the first order to
the facts and the business of life. Arnold says
of Sophocles :

• He saw life steadily, and saw it whole.'

Substitute for the word ' life ' the words ' organ-
ised society,' and you get a peep into Burke's
mind. There was a catholicity about his gaze.
He knew how the whole world lived. Every-
thing contributed to this : his vast desultory
reading ; his education, neither wholly acade-
mical nor entirely professional ; his long years
of apprenticeship in the service of knowledge ;



i 7 2 EDMUND BURKE.

his wanderings up and down the country ; his
vast conversational powers ; his enormous cor-
respondence with all sorts of people ; his unfail-
ing interest in all pursuits, trades, manufactures
— all helped to keep before him, like motes
dancing in a sunbeam, the huge organism of
modern society, which requires for its existence
and for its development the maintenance of
credit and of order. Burke's imagination led
him to look out over the whole land : the legis-
lator devising new laws, the judge expounding
and enforcing old ones, the merchant despatch-
ing his goods and extending his credit, the
banker advancing the money of his customers
upon the credit of the merchant, the frugal man
slowly accumulating the store which is to sup-
port him in old age, the ancient institutions of
Church and University with their seemly pro-
visions for sound learning and true religion, the
parson in his pulpit, the poet pondering his
rhymes, the farmer eyeing his crops, the painter
covering his canvases, the player educating the
feelings. Burke saw all this with the fancy of a
poet, and dwelt on it with the eye of a lover.
But love is the parent of fear, and none knew
better than Burke how thin is the lava layer
between the costly fabric of society and the



EDMUND BURKE. 173

volcanic heats and destroying flames of anarchy^.
He trembledlbTthe fair frame of all established
things, and to his horror saw men, instead of 7
covering the thin surface with the concrete,
digging in it for abstractions, and asking funda-
mental questions about the origin of society, and
why one man should be born rich and another /
poor. Burke was no prating optimist : it was •
his very knowledge how much could be said
again sFsociety that quickened his fears for it.
There is no shallower criticism than that which
accuses Burke in his later years of apostasy from
so-called Liberal opinions. Burke was all his
life through a passionate maintainer of the estab
lished order of things, and a ferocious hater of
abstractions and metaphysical politics. The
same ideas that explode like bombs through his
diatribes against the French Revolution are to
be found shining with a mild effulgence in the
comparative calm of his earlier writings. I have
often been struck with a resemblance, which 1 /)
hope is not wholly fanciful, between the attitude flSuJ
of Burke's mind towards government and that
of Cardinal Newman towards religion. Both
these great men belong, by virtue of their imagi- (^y^y/
nations, to the poetic order, and they both are
to be found dwelling with amazing eloquence,



>74



EDMUND BURKE.



detail, and wealth of illustration on the varied
elements of society. Both seem as they write to
have one hand on the pulse of the world, and
to be for ever alive to the throb of its action ;
and Burke, as he regarded humanity swarming
like bees into and out of their hives of industry,
is ever asking himself, How are these men to be
saved from anarchy? whilst Newman puts to
himself the question, How are these men to be
saved from atheism? Both saw the perils of
free inquiry divorced from practical affairs.

1 Civil freedom,' says Burke, ' is not, as many
' have endeavoured to persuade you, a thing that
' lies hid in the depth of abstruse science. It is
' a blessing and a benefit, not an abstract specu-
1 lation, and all the just reasoning that can be
1 upon it is of so coarse a texture as perfectly to
1 suit the ordinary capacities of those who are to
. ' enjoy and of those who are to defend it.'

4 Tell men,' says Cardinal Newman, 'to gain
1 notions of a Creator from His works, and if
1 they were to set about it (which nobody does),
1 they would be jaded and wearied by the
1 labyrinth they were tracing ; their minds would
' be gorged and surfeited by the logical opera-
'tion. To most men argument makes the
• point inTiand more doubtful and considerably



EDMUND BURKE. 175

1 less impressive. After all, man is not a reason-
' ing animal, he is a seeing, feeling, contemplat-
' ing, actual animal.'

Burke is fond of telling us that he is no
lawyer, no antiquarian, but a plain, practical
man ; and the Cardinal, in like manner, is ever
insisting that he is no theologian — he leaves
everything of that sort to the schools, whatever
they may be, and simply deals with religion on
its practical side as a benefit to mankind.

If either of these great men has been guilty of
intellectual excesses, those of Burke may be
attributed to"~ his ""dread" "of anarchy, those of
Newman to his dread of atheism. Neither of
them was prepared to rest content with a scien-
tific frontier, an imaginary line. So much did
they dread their enemy, so alive were they to
the terrible strength of some of his positions,
that they could not agree to dispense with the
protection afforded by the huge mountains of
prejudice and the ancient rivers of custom. The
sincerity of either man can only be doubted by
the bigot and the fool.

But Bu rke, apart from his fears, had a con- V? #*W
s titutiona l love tor old things, simply because



\



they were old. Anything mankind had ever
worshipped, or venerated, or obeyed, was dear



O^A



1 76 EDMUND BURKE.

to him- I have already referred to his pro-
viding his Brahmins with a greenhouse for the
purpose of their rites, which he watched from
outside with great interest. One cannot fancy
Cardinal Newman peeping through a window to
see men worshipping false though ancient gods.
Warren Hastings' high-handed dealings with the
temples and time-honoured if scandalous cus-
toms of the Hindoos filled Burke with horror.
So, too, he respected Quakers, Presbyterians,
Independents, Baptists, and all those whom
he called Constitutional Dissenters. He has a
fine passage somewhere about Rust, for with all
his passion for good government he dearly loved
a little rust. In this phase of character he re-
minds one not a little of another great writer —
whose death literature has still reason to deplore
— George Eliot ; who, in her love for old hedge-
rows and barns and crumbling moss-grown walls,
was a writer after Burke's own heart, whose
novels he would have sat up all night to devour ;
for did he not deny with warmth Gibbon's
statement that he had read all five volumes of
Evelina in a day ? ' The thing is impossible,'
cried Burke ; ' they took me three days doing
1 nothing else.' Now, Evelina is a good novel,
but Silas Marner is a better.



EDMUND BURKE. 177

Wordsworth has been called the High Priest
of Nature. Burke may be called the High
Priest of Order — a lover of set tled ways, of
justice, peace, and security. His writings are a
storehouse of wisdom, not the cheap shrewdness
of the mere man of the world, but the noble,
animating wisdom of one who has the poet's
rTearTas"wetl as the statesman's brain. Nobody
is fit to govern this country who has not drunk
deep at the springs of Burke. ' Have you read
, your Burke ?' is at least as sensible a question
to jput to a parliamentary candidate, as to ask
him whether he is a total abstainer or a desperate
drunkard. Something there may be about Burke
to regret, and more to dispute ; but that he
loved justice and hated iniquity is certain, as also
it is that for the most part he dwelt in the paths
of purity, humanity, and good sense. May we
be found adhering to them I



12



THE MUSE OF HISTORY.

Two distinguished men of letters, each an
admirable representative of his University — Mr.
John Morley and Professor Seeley — have lately
published opinions on the subject of history,
which, though very likely to prove right, deserve
to be carefully considered before assent is
bestowed upon them.

Mr. Morley, when President of the Midland
Institute, and speaking in the Town Hall of
Birmingham, said : ' I do not in the least want
1 to know what happened in the past, except as
' it enables me to see my way more clearly
' through what is happening to-day,' and this
same indifference is professed, though certainly
nowhere displayed, in other parts of Mr. Morley 's
writings.' 54 '

Professor Seeley never makes his point quite
so sharp as this, and probably would hesitate to
* Critical Miscellanies , vol. iii., p. 9.



THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 179

do so, but in the Expansion of England he ex-
pounds a theory of history largely based upon
an indifference like that which Mr. Morley pro-
fessed at Birmingham. His book opens thus :

* It is a favourite maxim of mine that history,
' while it should be scientific in its method,
1 should pursue a practical object — that is, it
' should not merely gratify the reader's curiosity
1 about the past, but modify his view of the

* present and his forecast of the future. Now,
' if this maxim be sound, the history of England
'ought to end with something that might be
' called a moral.'

This, it must be admitted, is a large order.
The task of the historian, as here explained, is
not merely to tell us the story of the past, and
thus gratify our curiosity, but, pursuing a
practical object, to seek to modify our views of
the present and help us in our forecasts of the
future, and this the historian is to do, not un-
consciously and incidentally, but deliberately
and of set purpose. One can well understand
how history, so written, will usually begin with a
maxim, and invariably end with a moral.

What we are afterwards told in the same book
follows in logical sequence upon our first quota-
tion — namely, that 'history fades into mere